Although the Minnesota apple harvest begins in August, for a lot of folks apple season goes hand in hand with the changing and falling of leaves. Apples are a fantastic late summer treat, but there’s nothing like a crisp, freshly-harvested apple (or a hot apple crisp!) on a brisk autumn day.
Walk into a typical supermarket and you’ll see several shades of these sweet treats proudly taking up some serious real estate in the produce aisle. Yet this is a mere smattering of the 7,500 varieties grown around the world. According to Rebecca Wood, author of The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia, “Because every apple seed contains unique genetic material, you can plant ten seeds from a single apple and get ten different kinds of apple trees. However most of our commercial varieties lack genetic diversity.”
